No newspaper or periodical worth its name in India will
publish what I write in the lines that follow. Not because the subject
matter is seditious or sacrilegious or obscene, or even controversial,
but simply because it defies the Emergency imposed on this country by
Muslim theologians and politicians backed by 'secularist' intellectuals
and politicians and riotous Muslim mobs and plain terrorists.

The Indian intelligentsia, by and large, is very well
aware of what Emergency means. It had a firsthand experience during 1975-77
when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi extended to everyone the fullest "freedom"
to extol her, but put in jail all those who asked inconvenient questions
about her doings. If any member of this intelligentsia is asked what he
thinks of that Emergency, the answer is always a loud disapproval. But
the same intelligentsia is not even aware that Islam has imposed an Emergency
on India, so that everyone has the perfect "liberty" to praise
its Allah, its prophet, its scriptures, its history, and its heroes but
gets into trouble if he so much as says that Islam should answer some
questions.

Muslims have a popular saying: ba khuda diwana bash
o ba Muhammad hoshiyar (have fun about Allah but be careful when it
comes to Muhammad). This seems to be a very apt warning because in the
belief system that is Islam, Allah has been replaced by his prophet. One
cannot be a Muslim merely by believing in Allah as the only God; one has
to believe in Muhammad also as the Last Prophet. In fact Allah is not
and cannot be known or even approached except through Muhammad. Allah
has spoken through Muhammad in the Quran and acted through him in the
Hadis.

The Hadis, collected labouriously and preserved meticulously,
has been the source for the life story, Sirat, of the Prophet. We have
as many as six life stories which the orthodox theology of Islam regards
as sacred literature in which a "divine pattern of human conduct"
is supposed to have been unfolded.

So far so good. The trouble arises when persons other
than pious Muslims examine these life stories. There is a lot in them
which offends man's normal moral sense and natural reason. But Islam does
not permit anyone to probe that part of the Prophet's life. The Prophet
himself had pronounced and carried out death penalty for all those who
asked inconvenient questions about his person and mission. That became
a permanent prescription for all Muslims.

There were many incidents in medieval Indian history
when Hindus were put to death for making critical remarks about the Prophet.
One of these Hindus was a schoolboy who got provoked by remarks which
one of his Muslim classmates had made about Hinduism, and said something
derogatory about the Prophet. He was put to death. Many such stories in
medieval times must have remained unrecorded.

Muslim rule disappeared long ago from large parts of
India but Muslim terrorism continued to prevail. Even the Christian missionaries
who heaped vile abuse on all Hindu avatars, saints and sages, were careful
when it came to Muhammad. The Arya Samaj was the first Hindu movement
to take up a bold stand in this context. Maharshi Dayanand himself had
showed up Muhammad for the sort of man he was. Soon after, however, the
Arya Samaj was silenced effectively by a series of murders, notably that
of Pandit Lekhram and Swami Shraddhananda. The British were inclined to
permit fair criticism, particularly that which was based on Islamic sources.
But they could not prevent Muslim assassins from taking the law in their
own hands.

The movement led by the Indian National Congress made
its own characteristic contribution to Muslim self righteousness. In the
hope of winning the Muslims over to the nationalist platform, Congress
leaders frowned upon all criticism of Islam and the Muslim rule in medieval
India. Till the turn of the nineteenth century, Hindus by and large had
never accepted Islam as a religion or Muslim rule as a native dispensation.
The Congress leadership whitewashed both and, by means of sustained propaganda,
made them acceptable to the Hindu intelligentsia.

The Communists who appeared on the scene in the twenties
went much further. They glorified Islam as a message of social equality
and human brotherhood, while they denigrated Hinduism as a system based
on class exploitation and caste oppression. M.N. Roy wrote a book, Role
of Islam in History, in 1939 in which he hailed the advent of Islam
in India as a liberating force. Islam, he said, had come to complete the
social revolution which Buddhism had left unfinished but, like Buddhism,
was frustrated by 'reactionary' Brahminism.

Meanwhile, Christian missionary propaganda had made Brahminism
the arch villain of Indian history. Hindu reform movements had picked
up the plank. Brahminism was fast losing ground among the vocal Hindu
intelligentsia. People like E.V. Ramaswami Naicker and B.R. Ambedkar identified
Hinduism with Brahminism and declared war on both. So did the Sikhs. The
Jains also started distancing themselves from Hinduism. Now it is the
turn of the Ramakrishna Mission and the Arya Samaj. But that is a different
and a long story.

What is relevant here is that Islam continued to gain
the lustre which Hinduism was losing fast. In due course, it became a
crime called 'communalism' to say anything except laudatory about Islam.
The Quran and the Prophet were winning fulsome praise on every public
platform. The slogan of sarva-dharma-samabhâva was becoming
the national consensus. It never meant that Hinduism could not be criticized,
even maligned and ridiculed. What it meant was that everyone was free
to praise Islam as much as he pleased. The Emergency which Islam had imposed
after its advent in India and which had caused resentment among Hindus
for a long time, now stood fully sanctioned by the Hindu elite. All religions
were equal. But Islam was more equal. Small wonder that Muslims acquired
an unpre-cedented sense of self - righteousness; they had scored a triumph
which their sword had failed to win for them in more than a thousand years.

That was the situation when the country was partitioned
and drowned in blood by the Muslim League. The event entailed widespread
resentment against Muslims. But Islam was hardly mentioned; if escaped
unscathed.

The Hindu movements like the Hindu Mahasabha and the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had never showed any understanding of
Islam even before partition. Most of their ire had been directed against
Muslims. They had failed to see that Muslims were our own people alienated
from us by Islam. The only saving feature was that they had not come out
in praise of Islam. They had observed a stony silence on the subject.

The scene progressed after the advent of independence,
particularly after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru took command of the Indian
National Congress and the country. His animus against Hinduism was derived
from his love for Communism. He knew next to nothing about Buddhism; the
only reason be hailed it as well as its hero, Ashoka, was that in his
perception Buddhism was a 'revolt' against 'reactionary' Brahminism. Had
he known the truth about Buddhism, he would have dropped it like a hot
potato. The same psychology made him fall for Islam. Otherwise he was
equally ignorant of, and equally indifferent to all religions. The Secularism
which be espoused was not borrowed from the modem West. For him, it was
only a smokescreen for Hindu-baiting. The fashion was picked up fast by
a servile intelligentsia and became a national cult. The more one hated
Hinduism, the more one prospered. Hindu-baiting became the most profitable
profession in politics, the media and the academia. The word "Hindu"
became a dirty word.

The Hindu Mahasabha had declined fast in post-independent
India. But it must be said to its credit that it never became ashamed
of being Hindu, and never went on the defensive when called communalist.
It kept its earlier stand un-compromised, though it had hardly any say
in public life any more.

The RSS, however, behaved differently. The ban imposed
on it after the murder of Mahatma Gandhi had frightened it out of its
wits. It went on the defensive all along the line, and started spending
all its time in proving that it was not a communalist organisation. It
retained the word "Hindu" in its private verbiage, but eschewed
it from its public pronouncements. The word "Bharatiya" defined
territorially and not culturally, became its substitute for the word "Hindu".
All its fronts including the political party, Jana Sangh, became "Bharatiya".

Meanwhile, Muslim theologians and politicians had acquired
a veto on pronouncing who was secular and who was communal. No one questioned
that claim, at least not the Hindu leaders and organisations. No organisation,
particularly no political party, could call itself secular if it had no
Muslim members. The Jana Sangh had aspired for the label of Secularism
from its very foundation. It was now shouting sarva-dharma-samabhâva
louder than everyone else. It tried its best to enroll Muslim members.
The highest ambition of the Jana Sangh and the RSS now was that they be
accepted as secular by the Congress, the Socialists and the Communists.
The other parties refused to oblige. The more the RSS and the Jana Sangh
swore by Secularism, the louder they were accused of being communal. The
RSS and Jana Sangh started losing fast their own identity without gaining
the one for which they aspired.

The custodians of Islam were now ready to apply the litmus
test. They staged a riot against a book, Muhammad by Thomas and
Thomas, published in the U.S.A. and reprinted by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan,
Bombay. The book narrated how Muhammad had become frightened when Gabriel
came to him with the first revelation from Allah. He wanted to know whether
he had been visited by an angel or a satan. So he rushed to his wife,
Khadija, and told her what had happened. She asked him to inform her when
Gabriel visited him next. He did so. Khadija bared her right and left
thighs turn by turn, asked Muhammad to sit on each, and see if the visitor
stayed on or disappeared. Muhammad did so. The visitor stayed on. Next
Khadija bared her bosom, made Muhammad sit in her lap and embrace her.
Even then the visitor did not leave. Finally, Khadija asked Muhammad to
have sexual intercourse with her. The visitor disappeared. Khadija congratulated
Muhammad that his visitor was an angel and not a satan.

This story was based on what can be read in every orthodox
biography of Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq, the first biographer, says:

Ismail b. Abu Hakim, a freedman of the family of al-Zubyr,
told me on Khadija's authority that she said to the apostle of God,
'O son of my uncle, are you able to tell me about your visitant, when
he comes to you?' He replied that he could, and she asked him to tell
her when he came. So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont, the apostle
said to Khadija, 'This is Gabriel who has just come to me.' 'Get up,
O son of my uncle, she said, 'and sit by my left thigh.' The apostle
did so, and she said 'Can you see him? 'yes', he said. She said 'Then
turn around and sit on my right thigh.' He did so, and she said, 'Can
you see him?' When he said that he could she asked him to move and sit
in her lap. When he had done this she again asked if he could see him,
and when he said yes, she disclosed her form and cast aside her veil
while the apostle was sitting in her lap. Then she said, 'Can you see
him?' And he replied, 'No' she said, 'O son of my uncle, rejoice, and
be of good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan.'

I told 'Abdullah b. Hasan this story and he said, 'I
heard my mother Fatima, daughter of Husayn, talking about this tradition
from Khadija, but as I heard it she made the apostle of God come inside
her shift, and thereupon Gabriel departed, and she said to the apostle
of God, 'This is really an angel and not a satan."'

These two paras can be read by anyone on p. 107 of The
Life of Muhammad published by the prestigious Oxford University Press,
Karachi, Pakistan, first time in 1955, and reprinted seven times till
1987. The book is an English translation by A. Guillaume of Ibn Ishaq's
Sirat Rasul Allah.

Moreover, the authors of the book Muhammad bore
no malice towards the Prophet. On the contrary, they were endorsing, after
the orthodox Muslim fashion, that the revelations received by Muhammad
had a divine source.

No one knows who or what was the target of Muslims going
of the rampage, demanding a ban on the book, and confiscation of all copies
in print. It is quite possible that Prime Minister Nehru wanted to finish
K.M. Munshi, the Kulapati of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan. Munshi had earned
the enmity of Nehru because he took pride in Hinduism. In any case, whatever
the motive, the book was banned. Munshi who was the Governor of U.P. at
that time not only apologised publicly but also lied with a straight face
that he celebrated the birthday of the Prophet every year! He was never
known to have any soft corner for anything Islamic. But he was a weak
man and a politician who felt uncomfortable if out of office. No one cared
to examine or point out the source on which the authors of Muhammad
had drawn.

The average Muslim does not know what is written in his
scriptures. He has the normal moral notions of his Hindu neighbours. The
Muslim theologians and politicians exploit his ignorance and mobilize
him on the streets by ascribing to "enemies of Islam" what is
in fact contained in their own sacred books! Even if some one points out
the source, he can be accused of quoting out of context!

The same pattern was repeated in the case of the Hindi
translation of Ram Swarup's Understanding Islam Through Hadis.
The book was published in the U.S.A. in 1982 and reprinted by Voice of
India, New Delhi, in 1983 from plates of the original edition. It is a
summary, chapter by chapter, of Sahih Muslim, the second most sacred collection
of Hadis. It was examined by the Delhi Administration and found unobjectionable.
So another reprint was brought out by Voice of India in 1987. A Hindi
translation was also printed in the same year. Two thousand printed copies
of the Hindi translation were with the binder when they were seized by
the police on December 19, 1987. A Muslim neighbour had read the translation
and collected a mob which threatened to bum down the binder's establishment.
The police intervened, took away all the two thousand copies of the book,
and arrested the binder. The publisher, Sita Ram Goel, was arrested the
same day along with the printer. They could be bailed out only after spending
18 hours in police custody. The Delhi Administration to which the case
was sent up by the police, appointed two screening committees successively
to examine the Hindi translation. It was found unobjectionable. Finally,
on June 2, 1990, the Delhi Administration recommended to the appropriate
court that the case could be closed. But the Muslim complainant stood
up in the court and requested a postponement of the case. He said he would
get the decision of the Delhi Administration reversed. The court gave
him time, again and again, and on his failing to appear, dismissed the
case on September 28, 1990.

Meanwhile, Rediance, a Weekly published by the
Jamaat-e-Islami from Delhi, had raised hell in its issue of 17-23 June,
1990. "Most portions of the book are concoctions and distortions
as well as defamatory and derogatory to the Holy Prophet", it wrote.
It went on to quote passages from the translation without informing the
readers that all of them are found in the orthodox collections of Hadis
as well as the pious biographies of the Prophet! It depended on the ignorance
of the common Muslim and ascribed those passages to the writer, Ram Swarup!
Small wonder that some young Muslims visited the office of Voice of
India, a few days later, and warned that 'such gemmicks' could cause
trouble.

But what happened on 27th November 1990 was the most
surprising event in the history of this case. A notification of the Delhi
Administration announced that the Hindi translation, Hadîs ke
Mâdhyama se Islâm kâ Addhyana had been banned and
all its copies stood confiscated as soon as published. There was not the
hint of a reference that the same Administration had screened the book
not once but twice, over a period of three years, cleared it as unobjectionable,
and got dismissed the case registered against the publisher and the printer.

Come March 1991 and the English original of the book
was also banned by the same Administration, without taking into account
the fact that this book had been in print and circulation in India for
eight years and that the Administration itself had found it unobjectionable
after having scrutinized it for months soon after it was published. Strange
are the ways of Secularism in India!

Footnotes:

1
This article was written for a periodical published from Washington
by a group of Indian residents in the U.S.A., but was not sent because
the periodical closed down.